Because I Have to Hate: Spring

You know that feeling when you are cuddled up under a blanket - all cozy and protected - and someone takes the blanket off of you? And suddenly you feel cold and irritated? Now, imagine the person who just took the blanket off of you is happy and excited and wants you to get up and be excited too? Wouldn't you end up hating that person in that moment? Not only are you now shivering, but you were feeling content and this idiot in front of you wants you to instantly feel the exact same way they are feeling? And when you protest that you were comfortable under the blanket, they look at you like you are crazy and ask, "What is wrong with you?"

That is precisely how I feel from mid-March until the end of May. Winter is my blanket and Spring (and all of the happy people enjoying it) are the blanket thieves. No matter how much I try to prepare for the onslaught of depression when springtime arrives, it never fails to kick my ass - every single year. I hate the light this time of year, especially once Daylight Savings begins. I hate the warm-but-not-yet-warm days in March and April that are harbingers of the doom to come. I hate the sound of the birds that wake me up in the morning... devastating sirens that signal my crash. I hate how everyone is cheerful and inevitably can't greet me without a redundant "Isn't it a gorgeous day out today?" (as though every other person, store clerk, and Facebook status update hadn't already alerted me to that fact.) And I hate the goddamn daffodils that will be popping their insipid yellow heads up out of the ground any day now.

I hate how everyone else feels liberated by Spring and I just feel like I am watching everyone else move on from what I thought was a shared rancor for life. I guess that is a huge part of it... a feeling of utter isolation while everyone else moves on from Winter and I am still here. Stuck in my own resentment for living. Maybe it is just that I can fool myself into thinking that I am not so alone in my hatred for life when, during the wintertime, everyone else turns into miserable, grumbling, depressed creatures as well.

I used to think that I was alone in my Spring-induced depression, but believe it or not, there are quite a number of people who experience the same feelings about it that I do. Even more astounding is the fact that the suicide rate in the Northern hemisphere spikes sharply in the months of April and May (and in November in the Southern hemisphere.) There is truly something about the nicer weather that just gets to some people in the same way many people feel in the darker months of the year.

But maybe it isn't such a difficult concept to grasp after all. Everyone seems to accept that suicide and depression will rise around the holidays for people who are alone or missing loved ones during a time of forced happiness. And, isn't this stark contrast between what someone is supposed to feel during the holidays and what they really feel exactly what people identify as the reason for the holiday blues? So, it really isn't any different with Spring. All of the messages coming not just from other people but from Mother Fucking Nature herself are full of directives of how I am "supposed" to feel. But I don't feel that way. I feel a deadening and a loss for the bleakness of winter that so perfectly mirrored my inner experience. Spring forces me to acknowledge this contrast between the inner and outer worlds. It forces me to recognize that I am different in my inner experience from all of the "normal" people. It rips the blanket of winter off slowly, painfully, inchingly - with each bird chirp, flower head, and every idiot girl who feels the need to wear sandals on the first sunny-and-45 degree day.